Category: Authentic Leadership

Polish the headstone

On Christmas morning I’ll visit the grave of my maternal grandparents at Waikumete Cemetery. They won’t know I’ve been and actually, I hardly knew my grandfather who died when I was 5 years old. I have one only memory of him  – going up the escalators at Farmers – I think!. Christmas day as a boy felt like a very special day, in fact it felt so special that when we went out in the car to visit (usually Dad’s boss Huia Gilpin who lived in the Botanic Gardens in Christchurch), I would look at other people in their cars with some sort of reverence, almost amazement, that here we had arrived on this most special of days. Surely today we were a united community with clean cars, best clothes and only good things to say and do. And new stuff from under the tree. The whole world must be amazing today.

I re-live that feeling in part by listening to ridiculously cliche-ridden carols and cleaning the car (I only just realised that! ah the power of blogging). And by visiting Mum’s parents’ grave at Waikumete. Grandma was a pretty no-nonsense sort of person. I remember after a holiday in Auckland in January, all piling in the car to leave with her on the steps of her three-bedroom unit in Haverstock Road, Sandringham.  “Lovely to see you arrive, lovely to see you go” she declared. I was crushed. How could she say such a thing? How could the nine of us squeezed into her flat in Sandringham for three weeks with a week or so in the middle at Stanmore Bay, have been anything other than a joyous experience?

Later, when I boarded with her as a 21 year-old, she reprimanded me for inappropriate sarcasm to some door-to-door religious salesmen in white shirts and black name tags. No nonsense, but tolerant at the same time.

For some reason, time is the excuse, I haven’t put up a Christmas Tree this year. I might tonight. I might not. Somehow, it doesn’t seem important. The mind feels clear and at peace after a big year both professionally and personally and the tree seems not necessary for the experience of Christmas peace.

The man who lived 2000 years ago and was executed by the government of the day in a pretty routine method at that time, spoke, or at least had recorded about him, of tolerance. If he were around today, he’d be pretty shocked at the lack of tolerance by many of the establishments built up in his name. He’d be impressed by some, sure.

I feel very grateful that in my world there’s a lot of tolerance about race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, ability, wants. But unlike the visit to the Botanic Gardens in the 70s I realise that much or even most of the world is not so fortunate. Some people can’t choose what they wear, or eat, or days they work, because of intolerance based supposedly on the words of men who spoke primarily of such a thing. Strange.

None of this is going to change anytime soon, but every step of Authenticity and Tolerance as leaders we make to our teams and communities, it’s a step that will, with many other steps, ripple eventually across the oceans to maybe some poor kid in Africa infected by AIDS at birth from her mother.

So when I polish up the headstone, I’ll remember Grandma’s tolerance, at least on that one day that I got told off. But I’ll continue to be intolerant of one thing though: Intolerance. Make a stand for it. You won’t just lead a great team. Take how we lead at work as authentic leaders into all of the world and don’t put up with intolerance. We could save more lives that way than ever before.

That’s a Christmas worth having. Same one as a boy I thought the world was having.

Take your time

It’s a crazy time of the year – hot, wet today, busy, traffic is mad. And all the time our planet is hurtling through space at 1m km/h (that’s the relative speed of earth around the sun and our galaxy through our universe I think but I digress!). It’s been a busy couple of weeks. After 12 years of waiting, my son Tim had a replacement cornea graft which is promising for his vision. I was surprised how emotional I felt when he went into surgery. It’s been a long time, or felt it, waiting for his eyes to be in good health for the procedure. Before and after the surgery I’ve been helping lead teams develop their charters and learn about themselves. Which takes time.

The charter is usually just the beginning, but it’s a really important beginning, setting the rules of engagement and developing a vision of what the team would like the future to look like. One exercise that was supposed to take 15 minutes yesterday with one group took an hour and a half. You might ask if that mattered? Well yes it did. It mattered a lot that the team went where it needed to, taking the time. At the end of the session, they said that this first part was the most valuable.

Management requires action. Leadership needs patience. We need both but the best actions are those that follow a patient time of leadership. Professor Charles McGhee, Tim’s masterful surgeon who espouses opportunity and optimism on each encounter knows about patience. He knew not to rush in. But when it was time, he showed the best action you could hope for.  Two hours of careful surgery and Tim’s new cornea was in situ. And all around was a medical team who worked as one, including a theatre nurse who was there for Tim in 1995.

Vision for vision.

Stephen

Out and forward

Time has nearly run out on the 4th Authentic Leadership Course with only this afternoon left. It’s one year since us at the Centre for Innovative Leadership ran the first Course and we’ve done lots in-between.  The participants will head out today after a week of experiences that will touch them personally and professionally. And others will notice.

But what of Monday morning at work? Will it be reading emails  and catching up on work from this week? Probably yes.

In stepping out from a deep experience there are often unanswered questions – for some there are more questions than they started with. Stepping out of the old ways and moving forward with new insights and questions will embed changes.

Just like the Authentic Leadership Course. Each time we’ve run it, it’s been new, fresh and different from the last one. Learn from the past, grow, adapt to the new environment and forward we go.

There’s a paradox. If you’re always looking forward, you’ll miss the present. This week we had seven guests join us at different times to share their experiences and insights. We all listened and learned while they were here, in the present. Taking that, adapting to our authentic leadership is leveraging the take-out.

Big hit for me this week: Where you go is in your hands.  I thank our guest Lorraine for that one. Thanks. I’ll take that out and forward. Where to you might ask? Not sure yet, but I’ll decide, that’s for sure.

What are you taking out? And where? You better know.

Stephen

Inside Out

When I hang the clothes on my clothes horse, much to the disdain of any casual observers, they go on the line, like, well they just go there. Often inside out. When it’s all done and dried, then they are sorted and folded. They’re pretty and neat then, you’ll be pleased to know. Ordered.

Being someone how leaves the possibilities open it can mean last minute activities to get ready. Like having slightly wet socks drying on my car’s parcel shelf on the way out to Waitakere Estate yesterday. So at least now I look okay on the outside – well no-one has told me otherwise yet!

Eckhart Tolle tells us about life having an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Outer purpose concerns doing, and is secondary. Inner purpose, on the other hand concerns our Being and is primary. He says  “No matter how active we are, how much effort we make, out state of consciousness creates our world, and if there is no change on that inner lever, no amount of action will make any difference.”

It’s a year today that we started the first Authentic Leadership Course in the same room I am writing this blog. Even more than then, I believe that our authenticity is the key to leadership, organisational and business strength. And happiness. We have well-developed processes, great exercises and exceptional people that work with me. Our participants, like those before them want to make changes. Sometimes quickly. Identification of opportunities and issues early is fantastic and 24 hours into the programme, we’re seeing this already.

But changes happen from the Inside. Start there and change your being. Otherwise, it’s inside out. And you’ll have action, but it’ll be temporary.

We’ll spend the week feeling a bit mixed up at times, a bit disordered and the participants will feel at times that there’s lots to do in such a short time.  But a week of it and we’ll be clean and dry and suddenly, sometime unexpectedly, we’ll crinkle it all out and be ready for action.  

Stephen